ANZAC Day

[IQS.RLOW]

I have no respect for anything the govt does for war memorials and the like after they decided to desecrate the tomb of the unknown soldier by removing references to God and putting the blathering a of Keating on it.

[Neferti]

NOBODY cares what any of our Prime Ministers said. They are ALL a legend in their own minds, regardless of which side of politics they are/were on.

[Black Orchid]

Lest we Forget

[Rorschach]

Old news nef... the guy was howled down by the RSL and veteran groups.
Perhaps hebe was asleep when it first cropped up.

back at you. I didn't see it discussed anywhere else, but you're not really interested in ideas, are you? Just in personal sniping.

Not sniping just pointing out the truth.
Not my fault you missed it. Get a wider range of media sources.

[Hebe]

Old news nef... the guy was howled down by the RSL and veteran groups.
Perhaps hebe was asleep when it first cropped up.

back at you. I didn't see it discussed anywhere else, but you're not really interested in ideas, are you? Just in personal sniping.

Not sniping just pointing out the truth.
Not my fault you missed it. Get a wider range of media sources.

Oh bullshit. The earliest reference I can find is three days ago. Get a better argument.

[Rorschach]

back at you. I didn't see it discussed anywhere else, but you're not really interested in ideas, are you? Just in personal sniping.

Not sniping just pointing out the truth.
Not my fault you missed it. Get a wider range of media sources.

Oh bullshit. The earliest reference I can find is three days ago. Get a better argument.

3 days ago... and you posted it when?

[IQS.RLOW]

Typical leftwing academics, trying to tear down part of our nations history and they are given succour of course by the other bastion of leftwing fuckwittery, #theirABC

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph ... key_squad/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Tens of thousands of Australians marked yesterday’s Anzac Day commemoration with solemn attendance at dawn services and street marches.

The ABC’s taxpayer-funded fact-checking unit, however, marked the day by attempting to debunk what it described as “five common Anzac Day myths”.
The fact-checking unit, established last year following an additional $10 million in ABC funding from the Gillard Labor government, challenges alleged “myths” including the Gallipoli landing site, inadequate British command and Australian weapon tactics.

More contentiously, the ill-timed online piece also disputes the fitness of Australian soldiers and the worth of stretcher bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick, who famously entered battlefields with his donkey to rescue fallen Australian troops. Here’s how the ABC lined up its Aussie targets:
Historian Joan Beaumont from the Australian National University says the reality was that the Anzacs were ‘not really a race of athletes as they were sometimes called’.

Professor Beaumont says that although official war correspondent Charles Bean described them as being considerably fitter and taller than the men from the British working classes, in fact some of the physical standards weren’t high by modern standards.
Apples and oranges. Still, if we’re judging soldiers of 1915 by modern standards, why not compare the diggers of yesteryear to some of the pasty slobs currently draining our taxes at the ABC? Who would be your preferred ally in the trenches: a brave and lean soldier from the early 20th century or a pudding from Radio National?

The ABC also quotes Ashley Ekins, the head of military history at Canberra’s Australian War Memorial, on the subject of Simpson and his donkey. Ekins tells the fact-checkers that contrary to the popular belief, Simpson may not have saved any lives:
He did very brave work, he went into the gullies, he rescued men who were wounded, but mostly men with leg wounds … He may not have actually saved a single soldier who was going to die.
They may well have died if left bleeding in open territory. Deaths from severe leg wounds were not uncommon during WWI. More to the point, Simpson’s bravery under fire is unquestioned, even in the ABC’s report. So where’s the myth? What exactly is being debunked here? The report continues:
Professor Stanley, author of the book Simpson’s Donkey, says the Simpson story is a very confused one. For one thing, he says, it’s probable there was more than one donkey.
Give Professor Stanley the benefit of the doubt. It is possible that the ABC’s fact-checkers ran this quote without being aware that there is little historic dispute over Simpson’s donkeys. Captain Victor Conrick, a WWI Distinguished Service Order recipient and Gallipoli veteran, once reported: “Simpson carried out a very dangerous mission. He had several donkeys killed while on his job.”

An accompanying ABC video at the fact-checking site mentions several times that Simpson needed more than one donkey. On Anzac Day, this is what your taxes were paying for – century-late news that a genuine war hero was actually just some kind of common multiple donkey-user.

These so-called academics and the ABC are a disgrace to all Australians. They should be machine gunned in the nuts.

[IQS.RLOW]

Here is an article from Quadrant confirming that the establishment of the greasy left has sought to attack the ANZACs and disparage the memory and deeds of the men who fought.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2014/04 ... ac-legend/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Military Historians’ War on the Anzac Legend


The war on the Anzac tradition is intensifying. A long-term foe, Professor Joan Beaumont of the Australian National University, has published Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (2013) and she has been joined by an ex-army officer, James Brown, who has contributed Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (2014) to the campaign of denigration of what is seen as a “festival of mythology” and “Anzackery”, as a review of Broken Nation on Guardian.com puts it. As such books and other recent works discussed below make clear, the attack on Anzac and the Digger legend is an elitist project explicitly dedicated to destroying the popular view of these traditions held by Australians, and is being led by a cadre of academics, media apparatchiks, and some disaffected ex-army officers overwhelmingly located in Canberra and ensconced in elite institutions, including the Australian Defence Force Academy, the Australian National University and the Australian War Memorial, where the Australian officer corps and bureaucratic elite receive their education.

According to Brown, “This year an Anzac orgy begins. A commemorative program that would make the pharaohs envious.” Speaking on the ABC’s 7.30 in February, Brown mangled the metaphor, complaining that “we’re about to embark on a four-year festival for the dead which in some cases looks like a military Halloween”. Claiming in his book to speak for soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, Brown declares that they don’t want to be associated with the Anzac tradition: “They don’t want honour that rides with hubris. Or glory bestowed by a society that fetishises war but doesn’t know the first damn thing about fighting it.”

Is this really the perspective of contemporary Australian soldiers? Do they really see the upcoming centenaries as “an Anzac orgy”? Do they really lack all respect for Australian society and the Anzac tradition that seeks to honour the hundreds of thousands of their forebears who fought, died, or were maimed in the wars of the past century? If so, then the efforts of the anti-Anzac cadre operating in Australia’s elite institutions have been very effective indeed.

Or is Brown just projecting onto his comrades his own grievances, attitudes and values? Certainly he has a wide range of complaints to make about the military, particularly concerning authority and discipline. For example, he complains that troops wear gym clothes, thongs and T-shirts, listen to music, hit golf balls, stand around bonfires near combat zones, and aren’t sufficiently awestruck by their young officers. He quotes a report from a fellow “soldier-scholar” that complains the troops are spoilt and “feel entitled to be treated almost as Roman gladiators [expecting] everyone, including their superiors, to lavish them with attention”. Regrettably, according to Brown, “Australian officers are exceptionally careful not to be aloof from their soldiers”, and this has led to the loss of “valuable British officer traditions [that] delineate firmly between officer, warrant officer and soldier”. After all, “not all elitism is bad”. He laments that “discussing these deficiencies is difficult in a defence force trying to live up to the image of the exceptional Digger”, which is, of course, intrinsically anti-elitist and egalitarian.

Sickening.

[Hebe]

Yes, it is sickening. I don't care about the left-right thing, but I get very sick of people saying that ANZAC Day is a celebration of war.

I do agree that the commemorative purpose of it, and the solemnity of it seem to be getting lost. Apparently some people are even starting to say "Happy Anzac Day". Stupid bastards.

Maybe it 's the education system. When I was at school, we always had a broadcast of a reenactment of the Anzac Day landings. We were taught about Simpson and his donkey. I was born five years after the end of WWII and the memory of the horror of that was still extremely strong and it stayed strong until the late sixties, when The One Day of the Year was written.

The VietNam War didn't do a lot for it, but after the Vietnam vets got their recognition, I thought the reverence pretty well came back.

Only for the last few years, especially that year when the Australians turned Gallipoli into a farce (remember them playing "Stayin' Alive"?) it seems to be becoming a kind of circus.

When I go to our local cenotaph and see the one plaque there for a VietNam soldier who was killed when he was 19, and know from my neighbour that his family never got over his death, and I see the little bunch of flowers there, I am reminded that war is a really terrible terrible thing. They need to ensure that the centenary is commemorated with dignity and respect, and not treated like some kind of fucking tourist feather in the cap if you got a ticket.

[Rorschach]

It's never been a celebration of war. Time these Leftards grew up.